The present invention relates to patch or label attaching means for automatically, adhesively securing a label or adhesive strip of material to a document, and more particularly to negotiable instruments such as checks. In the United States MICR characters are utilized for check identification. In the course of processing checks at the bank the written amount is encoded in MICR characters, usually at the lower right hand corner of the check. Occasionally the person who encodes the amount makes a mistake. It is necessary to correct the MICR amount and for this purpose a label is attached to the check covering the erroneously encoded MICR amount. Thereafter the check can be re-encoded with the correct amount.
A primary object of the invention is to provide a label and/or patch dispenser for documents such as checks and items other than checks, as we contemplate documents such as short postcards, billing stubs, envelopes and the like may be used with the same apparatus. Such articles may be preprinted and yet have a need for attention getting label applied thereto or they may be processed like checks. The apparatus of the present invention may be used for applying a magnetic stripe by means of an adhesive patch bearing the stripe to a passbook or passport or the like.
A prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,833,448 granted Sept. 3, 1974 for, "An Apparatus for Automatically Attaching a Magnetizable, Machine Readable Stripe to a Commercial Document", assigned to the assignee of this application, and incorporated fully herein by reference, describes a manually driven apparatus for applying an overlay or patch to an item or document, such as a savings bank passbook, in which a supply of tapes or patches is applied to a document by the device which has a document receiving area adjacent to the tape supply and a document support throat into which the document is inserted and advanced and thereafter retracted and removed. A pick up reel arrangement adjacent the document receiving area is provided for advancing an individual patch from a supply of patches and over a pin where the patches are caused to detach from the supply for application to the document by means of a roller for adhering the patch to the document while simultaneously removably retracting the document from the document receiving area. In this prior art the movement of the document was controlled by the movement of a hand crank.